YEG Workshop: Finding the Unique in Your Family Story

Finding the Unique in Your Family Story: a summer-time writing adventure.

How do you write a lively and fascinating family memoir? How do you draw and satisfy readers from in and outside the family? What particular issues arise when writing family stories?

Both the instructors of this workshop, Caterina Edwards and Jean Crozier, faced these questions and more in producing their own families’ stories. They came to understand the complexities of family story-telling: the benefits and anxieties, the need for accuracy and the need to handle certain materials with great sensitivity.

Through discussion and examples, this workshop will assist students in identifying the unique characteristics of their own families. The instructors will assist students in weaving family perspectives and personalities – and their accompanying foibles, adventures, and challenges – into an intriguing, readable narrative. Literary techniques such as voice, dialogue, evocation of time and place, as well as truth and viewpoint, will be considered as students practice bringing family members
to life right on the page.

Students will write short pieces in class with prompts from the instructors; class members will read their work and share their situations, challenges, and successes in a supportive environment.

Our students have told us that:

“The two instructors complemented each other so well; they truly enhanced the program with their individual and shared expertise.”

“I leave the course inspired and much further along in my project.?”

Maximum class size: 10 students

Date: Wednesday, August 14, 2013 and Thursday, August 15, 2013

Time: 9:30 AM to 4:30 PM

Price: Early bird registration (registration and payment received by July
20, 2013) just